Let’s face it, we’ve all been guilty of it. You know what I am talking about. When you have to cut one day out of your weekly workout routine no matter what the reason is, which routine is the first to get cut?
Yes… leg day.
Unfortunately this is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when strength training if you want serious results. I will share with you 6 reasons why you should never skip leg day again.
The 6 Reasons Why You Should Never Skip Leg Day
Here are some of the biggest problems you’ll face if you skip leg day:
- Back Problems – When your body becomes top heavy you can expect to be more prone to back and spinal problems. Many people think that the main cause of back problems is in the back muscles, however your lower body plays an important part in the development or prevention of back problems. This is because when you have over developed muscles on your upper body and under developed muscles on your lower body you develop poor posture. Poor posture over long periods of time can shift your spine and make you use muscles in an unnatural way.
- More Injuries More Often – Going further into the issue of poor posture, by having under developed lower body muscles, you will have a hard time stabilizing yourself and practicing proper form during exercises. By having poor form while doing exercises, you increase your risk of injury.
- Lower Sex Appeal – Let’s face it. At least part of the reason why we work out is to look fit, healthy, and sexy. Nothing looks more unnatural than having a totally lean ripped upper body with piano legs.
- Less Weight Loss – The bigger the muscles, the more calories you exert doing exercises that target those groups. Some of your biggest muscles are in your lower body. Squats, step-ups, and deadlifts all burn a lot of calories as they work your major lower body muscle groups. Don’t expect to get six pack abs unless you break out the big guns which are your glutes, quads, and hamstrings.
- Less Muscle Mass – Your lower body is responsible for releasing a lot of your muscle building hormones. When you neglect your lower body, you are making it much harder for yourself to build muscle mass. While working on your lower body won’t have a direct impact on you improving your upper body strength, it will have an indirect effect. This means that by doing both upper and lower body workouts in a weekly fitness routine, you’ll release a significantly higher amount of muscle building hormones that will promote the repair and growth of muscle in your entire body.
- Quality of Life Suffers – Improving your overall quality of life is very high up there for one of the reasons why you exercise on a regular basis for most people. By becoming top heavy your mobility suffers. Having poor mobility causes you to not be able to do certain things that require physical activity properly. This negatively impacts your overall quality of life.
Never Skip Leg Day Again
Hopefully now you’ll understand the impact you put on your body when you continuously skip leg days. I don’t want you to fall victim of perfecting only the top half of your body.
The secret to having a fit, healthy, and sexy body is to work out your entire body evenly. You need to have a proper balance of intensity on all of your muscle groups if you ever want to look like those fitness models you see on advertisements.
That is why I suggest if you need to skip a workout day here and there (which I highly don’t recommend, but hey sometimes things do come up in life.) then you do it on a rotational basis. What I mean by that is if you skipped leg day last, skip a day where you work on your upper body next if you have to.
Keeping a balanced exercise routine along with a proper diet are the secrets to a successful body transformation.
Are you guilty of regularly skipping leg days?